The goal of the charitable organization is to raise and donate money for eight small initiatives in and around New York (including for homeless people and orphans). Thanks to the close proximity and the low administrative costs, the majority of the donations go directly to those in need.
On that evening in the Hard Rock Café, the manager of “Charity Begins at Home”, 85-year-old Louise Friedman, looked back to its beginnings: “In 1976 the Rehabilitation Institute of Nassau County, a project for the mentally ill, was having money problems. We asked 14 rock stars for financial support. Billy Joel was the only one who answered. He came down the Jericho Turnpike on his motorcycle to my office and asked: ‘How can I help you?’ I asked him to give a concert to get the much-needed money together – and he did it! The concert brought us 250,000 dollars! It was such a success that Billy wanted to start a charity in order to help out other needy organizations in the area. That’s how ‘Charity Begins At Home’ started, 30 years ago.”
Billy Joel supports a whole host of projects – in aid of impoverished fishermen on Long Island, returning U.S. soldiers or young musicians, for example. He’s now also set up a foundation to support music schools. “Many musicians and artists support charity projects. I don’t know whether it has to do with our benevolence or because we have a bad conscience about the comfortable lives we lead. Musicians are always the first in line when it comes to giving money to a good cause. But I don’t want to shout it from the rooftops. I always find it a bit embarrassing when artists talk about their good deeds. What I always say is: ‘Do a good turn and keep your mouth shut.’”
In Daddy’s Footsteps
For Alexa, even more so than for her uncle Alexander, the name Joel is both a curse and a blessing. Alexa was brought up by her mother, Christie Brinkley, but still has a close relationship with Billy Joel. She wants to follow in her father’s footsteps and go her own way as a singer-songwriter.
“There are a lot of expectations when you have such famous parents as me”, says the effervescent 28-year-old, “people expect either you are totally terrible or a complete prodigy. But I am somewhere in between. I’ve grown up with music, it’s a huge part of my life. It’s very natural to me to sing and write songs. The press have treated me very well actually, I’ve got good reviews. I don’t use my father’s connections and I play in small little bars and go my own way. I’m very independent.”
Alexa also stood out as a child due to her musical talents. “She would sing herself to sleep”, explains Billy Joel. “One day, when she was maybe three years old, she was singing “Sunny Day”, the song from “Sesame Street”– but she was in the right key. Which means she has perfect pitch and a great ear. That blew me away. I said to myself: ‘Wow, she’s got it!’ I knew, she had the talent.”
And just as Billy did long ago and Alexander a little later with their father, Alexa sat on Billy’s lap, had a go on the piano and listened to just about everything, from Beethoven to the Beatles. Later, when she was five years old, she had classical piano lessons from a teacher in East Hampton. Here too, it was largely Alexa’s mother who made sure that her daughter practiced often. Alexa’s love of Chopin and Beethoven and nineteenth-century music probably comes from her daddy. But the youngster enjoyed singing even more: Old family videos show Alexa at home in different outfits dressed up as Madonna, Whitney Houston and Celine Dion, belting out their hits with an astonishingly powerful voice, sometimes accompanied by Billy at the piano.
Alexa Ray Joel, PR photo
“We soon noticed that music would play a big part in her life sometime,” explains Billy Joel. “She started writing her own songs at an early age, and she was soon able to play better piano than me”.
Alexa was eight when her parents separated – around the same age as Billy when his father simply disappeared. Billy wanted to protect his daughter from such a traumatic experience at all costs; his greatest wish was always to be the father he had never had. To this day, he keeps in close contact with Alexa, visits her regularly and speaks to her almost every day on the phone. She says, “I always knew that I was very fortunate. To me it was just normal going on the road and meeting other celebrities. My parents are my best friends. I might have been eight or nine when I found out that my parents were celebrities. In my teenage years it was hard – I had no self-confidence. I tried to figure out who I was. I don’t like to be compared with my parents.”
The past has a habit of catching up with you when you least expect it. On one of his last European tours, an unknown woman came to speak to Billy, showing him old photos of Helmut Joel with her children. He was pulling a sled through deep snow. But what was his father’s relationship to this woman and these children? “The photo with those other children affected me in a strange way,” says Billy, “because I couldn’t remember my father ever playing with me. But the fact that he evidently found time to play with other kids hurt a little, even after all these years.”
Alexa only saw her grandfather Helmut twice in her life and didn‘t have a very close relationship with him. “My father never ever said anything bad about him, and always defended him. But I know there will always be a big hole there. I get on great with my grandmother, Rosalind. She’s a fun, warm-hearted, talkative woman, and – as far as I know – just the opposite of Helmut.”
Alexa took the musical route at high school, and her father remembers one school concert particularly well, where his daughter stunned the audience with her fantastic rendition of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”. But a career as a concert pianist was never on the cards for Alexa, who has always wanted to play her own music.
At 17, she attended New York State University, where she studied music and theater. But she dropped out after a year, unable to work under the rigid structure of the curriculum. “Her mother was very scared about the situation”, says Billy Joel, “but I knew that Alexa wasn’t made to be a college student. I knew if you’re gonna be a professional musician, songwriter or performer you need to start early in your teenage years. You have to play in clubs or in colleges, wherever you can. You have to work, work, work; you also have to write, write, write, play, play, play, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse and record.”
And that is exactly what Alexa Ray Joel did, and she is proud of the fact that she has always made it on her own, without help from her famous father and without the backing of a record label: “I’m a real independent artist”, she says, “I make all the decisions myself, from choosing the songs to press photos. I’m a real control freak.”
But her father’s influence is clearly evident: Alexa has an unusually old-fashioned taste in music for a young woman, and prefers jazz, blues, pop and soul music from the 50s and 60s. It’s what she has grown up with. She doesn’t find contemporary sounds particularly appealing. Her favorites include black singers such as Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles and Marvin Gaye, not forgetting the Beatles and her own father. And just like him she appreciates great melodies. “She feels that she’s a living anachronism”, jokes Billy.
Alexa Ray Joel · © Steffen Radlmaier
In December 2005, Alexa performed her official debut in the New York nightclub “The Cutting Room”, and of course, her parents were there in the audience. At the age of 21, she left her musical calling card with the self-produced “Sketches” CD. It contains six self-written blues songs, including “Now It’s Gone”, which she dedicated to her mother. To be precise, in this song she sides with Christie Brinkley who at that time was still married to architect Peter Cook. Alexa never got on too well with her stepfather and wasn’t particularly sad when the marriage ended. She only felt sorry for her mother.
On the one hand, Billy Joel is delighted at his daughter’s musical ambitions, but on the other hand, he has his reservations: “I know how difficult a professional musician’s life is, and also that the music business is not a nice business. It’s very dirty and political, it can be very distressing. It’s full o
f corrupt people. I told her, ‘You have to know that your last name can be an albatross around your neck.’ Maybe people pay attention because of your name, maybe they are very skeptical. People in the press will perhaps say painful things about you. And she is such a sensitive girl. So I worried about that: Would she be able to deal with all that? I even said to her: ‘You’re sure that you wanna be famous?’ Because being famous looks great when you’re not famous. When you become famous a lot of people find it a pain in the ass, because you lose your privacy – and that’s an immense loss. I told her a lot about the negative parts, but she was focused on doing that. Like most kids at that age, she wouldn’t listen to what their parents say. They’ve got a vision and they go for it. Just like my brother Alex did.”
The young singer gets on with her ‘Uncle Alex’ like a house on fire. She says money and fame are not especially important to her – she simply wants to earn a living with her own music – just as her father once dreamed. But unlike him she doesn’t even need to work at all.
“She’s a rich kid”, says Billy Joel, “she has rich parents. How the hell she’s got the blues? How is this possible? The truth is: No matter who you are, everybody gets the blues. It’s a universally understood music. And she likes it.”
Alexa Ray Joel’s favorite music style is black music. Since childhood her favorite song has been a rhythm and blues number: “At Last” performed by Etta James.
And sometimes Alexa herself even sounds like a wizened old blues singer. “I like all the old stuff,” laughs Alexa. She has a very natural, straightforward and open air about her.
In spite of her love of all things old, she appreciates the possibilities opened up by the digital age and uses the Internet as a platform for herself and her music, but also to communicate with her fans. Facebook and YouTube are almost as important to her as live performances with her band. She hates it when – in reference to the ‘Piano Man’ – critics refer to her as the ‘Piano Girl’. “When I’m on stage I don’t think about my parents. I just want to do a good show. It would probably be harder for me if I was a man, then people would compare me even more with my father – just like happened to Jakob Dylan or Julian Lennon. But I’m not perfect, I’m still young and trying to find my way.”
In recent years Alexa has been making the headlines with her private life and her health. She is a regular guest on TV talkshows. In early December 2009 she was rushed to hospital in New York after an alleged suicide attempt. She was indeed very depressed due to relationship problems and had taken too much of the homeopathic medication, Traumeel.
She later revealed the breakdown was prompted by a fight with her ex-boyfriend Jimmy Riot, also bass player in her band. She told People magazine: “I did say, ‘I want to die’ on the 911 call. Did I really want to? Absolutely not! I was being dramatic, and I take responsibility and apologize to everybody involved.” Though Joel was never in serious danger she could no longer deny the despair she’d been trying to hide for a year. “I was in such a dark place,” she said. “My soul was shattered.”127
But, six months on from her breakdown, Joel had found happiness with singer-songwriter Cass Dillon, who already had a connection to his girlfriend’s rock and roll father – he recorded and released the charity single “Christmas in Fallujah” in 2007, a track originally written by Billy Joel.
Though her father had been open about his bouts of depression and 1970 suicide attempt, Alexa kept the extent of her struggle from her family. “I was embarrassed,” she said. “When you’re that depressed, you don’t feel like anybody is going to understand.” Christie Brinkley said the fact that she didn’t approve of Alexa’s attempts to get back together with Riot only added to the secrecy: “That’s something you have to be careful of in parenting. Express your disapproval but try to keep the lines of communication open.” The night of the overdose, Brinkley persuaded her daughter to go to a psychiatric hospital for 12 days of therapy. “I wanted her to get immediate help, find the reason and try to learn from it,” she told People magazine in May 2010.
Alex Ray Joel said that therapy allowed her to step away from the pressures of her life and dig deep. And she was talking more openly to her parents. “Dad always builds me up; he helped me get perspective back. My mom and I have more heart-to-hearts now … I’m in a Zen good place.”
Her fresh start, though, did include a new look. Alexa had rhinoplasty to correct a deviated septum – and to feel better about herself. “I liked everything else about my physical appearance,” she said, “but [my nose] always bothered me a bit. I had thought about it for about five years. I think I look more like me than my father’s daughter now.”
The new Alexa was also moving apartments and developing a different sound. “You can say I have new musical influences, new apartment, attitude, life … everything is new.”
Four years later, in April 2014, Alexa’s health problems were making the headlines again, just when things were going well with her music. Alexa Ray Joel had begun a sold-out two-week series of shows at New York’s prestigious Café Carlyle, where on Mondays Woody Allen regularly plays with his jazz band.
The performances were critically acclaimed. Stephen Holden wrote in The New York Times a review titled “A singer confidently following her heart”: “The 28-year-old daughter of Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley has her father’s eyes. Large, round, heavy-lidded and soulful, they express a confidence and brash, forthright attitude that is also conveyed in her singing, whose rough timbre and piercing high notes at times bring to mind a soprano answer to Stevie Nicks. Her sound, though not beautiful, is many shaded and emotionally high pitched. She has no problems with intonation.[…] Ms. Joel’s 11-song set was unusually short and had no encore. But she had more than enough time to portray herself as someone who follows her heart wherever it directs her, from rock classics (“A Whiter Shade of Pale”) to standards (“On the Sunny Side of the Street”) to traditional folk (“Loch Lomond” delivered with a light Scottish brogue) to Stevie Wonder’s “I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever)”. The show culminated with a fervent rendition of (what else?) “Just the Way You Are”.”128
But during the final concert at the Café Carlyle Alexa Ray Joel collapsed on stage. The singer-songwriter was immediately taken to New York Presbyterian Hospital’s Emergency Room. After examination, doctors diagnosed Ms. Joel with vasovagal syncope, one of the most common causes of fainting. The vasovagal syncope trigger causes a sudden drop in heart rate and blood pressure. That leads to reduced blood flow to the brain, which results in a brief loss of consciousness. Vasovagal syncope is usually harmless and requires no treatment. Ms. Joel was taken ill earlier in the afternoon and announced from stage that she pulled out her back and neck, but wanted the show to go on. Facebook statement from Alexa Ray Joel: “I wanted to thank everyone for coming out to support me. I was excited and determined to fulfill my final performance and I really wanted to end my run with a bang, but this was not what I had in mind and hope I have the opportunity to make it up to the wonderful audience very soon. Thanks for all the concern.”
On to New Horizons
Alexander Joel at the Dokumentationszentrum in Nuremberg, 2013 · © Steffen Radlmaier
The year 2014 marked a watershed for Alexander Joel – privately and professionally. In April he married Korean Opera singer Ha Young Lee, with whom he has been in a relationship for a long while. The couple met and fell in love in Hamburg, where the soprano has been a member of the State Opera ensemble since 2005.
Their daughter, Carla Lee, was born on May 11th. Her name was carefully chosen, according to family tradition: Carla is a reminder of Alexander’s grandfather Karl/Carl Joel (and Alexander’s second name is Charles too). However, Lee has a double meaning: Ha Young’s surname is also an English first name.
Alexander Joel conducted his last concert as Director of Music in Braunschweig on June 23, and he and his 250 musicians were raucously re
ceived by a delighted audience. The concert featured Anton Bruckner’s 9th Symphony and Te Deum. Joel didn’t extend his contract, and from now on will be working freelance in order to fulfill his international obligations as a guest conductor. He’ll be jumping in at the deep end, but it’s a calculated risk as he has numerous engagements already waiting for him in such renowned houses as the State Operas in Budapest, Stockholm and Hamburg, and at the Grand Théâtre in Geneva, the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, the Vlaamse Opera in Belgium, the Vienna Volksoper and – last but not least, three productions at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London. Furthermore, concerts with the Dresden State Orchestra and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande are also planned, among others.
“Alexander Joel, now in his early 40s, is a communicative, infectiously enthusiastic man, a thoughtful and scrupulous musician who also likes to draw colorful analogies between the worlds of opera and football (he is a fan of Manchester United),” wrote the prestigious Opera Magazine in its June 2014 edition.
“The secret of success is to know when to stop,” says Alexander. “It’s the same whether you’re a sportsman or an artist. Seven years in Braunschweig are enough. I rehearsed and conducted 17 premiers there, and at least as many reruns. In the meantime I can draw upon a repertoire of 84 operas, and that gives me self-confidence and assurance.”
Alexander Joel looks back on his time in Braunschweig with mixed feelings. “I had some wonderful moments here, great Opera premiers and exhilarating concerts. It was an artistic ripening process for me, without question. The most important thing in Braunschweig was this: I discovered and fell in love with Gustav Mahler, for personal reasons too. At the time I was going through a lot in my private life that Mahler made accessible to me, I suffered a lot. That included my father’s death in 2011, but also love-sickness. I was well able to relate to the things Mahler went through. Mahler is very Viennese, but also very Jewish. His music makes us feel deep pain, and he offers us a glimpse into the human abyss.”
Billy and the Joels--The American rock star and his German family story Page 23
